Orbx recently released their rendition of Melbourne International Airport (YMML) for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. The airport serves Melbourne, Australia, and has a yearly average of 35.1 million passengers.

It was built in 1970 to replace Essendon Airport, Melbourne’s former main airport. Its lack of expandability and Melbourne’s ever-increasing demand for air travel created the necessity for a completely new airport elsewhere, and the search started more than a decade prior, in 1958.

In that same year, the Commonwealth Government acquired 5,300 hectares of grassland in Tullamarine (which is still how some locals refer to the airport), and the construction effort was to start within a year.

It was opened for international operations in mid-1970, relegating Essendon to domestic operations, albeit temporarily as that was also moved to Tullamarine in 1971.

Its initial structure consisted of three connected terminals: International in the center, Ansett in the south, and Trans Australia Airlines in the north. It was designed to handle eight Boeing 707s per hour.

Minor expansion works were done in 1973 to make the airport compatible with Boeing 747s. 

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The new airport had already experienced congestion within a decade, reaching a peak of 900 passengers per hour.

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In the late 1980s, the Government formed the Federal Airports Corporation (FAC), which took over Melbourne and 21 other airports in Australia.

The new administrators took the expansion work upon themselves, carrying out a domestic terminal upgrade, reaching completion within two years, and the creation of a second pier for smaller regional airlines. A year later, work started on expanding the international terminal.

In 1995, a new three-level satellite concourse was opened, adding 10 jetways that doubled the airport’s passenger handling capabilities at the time.

A year before that, the Federal Airports Corporation decided to privatize all of their airports in a multi-phase project. Melbourne was one of the first to be privatized, and Australia Pacific Airports Corporation acquired it for 49 million dollars on a 50-year long-term lease.

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They handled multiple car parking expansions in the late 90s and the expansion of Qantas’ domestic terminal with a second pier and 9 new jetways.

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A fourth passenger terminal was opened in 2000, the Domestic Express Terminal.

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Five years later, the airport was upgraded to become compatible with the Airbus A380. This included widening the main north runway, building dual jetways, extending the international building by 20 meters to include new penthouse airline lounges, and building an additional baggage carousel in the arrivals hall.

In 2006, Terminal 2 was expanded with an additional 2,000 square meters and an additional level of airline lounges above the terminal. Two years later, a new Terminal 2 expansion commenced, adding another 25,000 square meters, five jetways on a new passenger concourse, and a new outbound passenger security and customs processing zone.

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The scenery features an accurate rendition of the airport, with custom ground textures, an up-to-date ground layout, PBR texturing, interior terminal modeling of the departure lounges, VDGS and custom traffic animations, meticulously hand-edited aerial imagery, custom taxiway signs, custom points of interest, performance-friendly optimization, and more.

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It’s available on OrbxDirect for roughly $22.28, requiring at least 6.57 GB of free hard disk space to install.

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